The staff of Mr Bing's Operations Restructuring project are pondering how to transform the way Detroit is run.
Sandy Baruah, head of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, reckons Mr Bing's proposals, while painful, are viable.
In Detroit, Mr Bing is urging unions to take furloughs and reduce health costs for new hires, among other concessions.
Both Mr. Bing and Ms. Loa attended California Institute of Arts in the late 1990s, but with Mr. Bing in visual arts and Ms. Loa in music the two never met.
Unlike previous deficit elimination plans, Mr. Bing's proposal anticipates declining revenues for the city.
"Julian and I bonded over Scritti Politti, " Mr. Bing said, referring to the British New Wave group.
Mr. Bing made tapes of his songs and passed them around to friends, complete with handmade cover art.
"We wanted to make pop songs but push the instrumentation, " Mr. Bing said.
"The pop people think it's too weird and the weird people think it's too pop, " Mr. Bing said of Fol Chen's music.
Mr. Bing plays his guitar through a synthesizer that produces otherworldly sounds.
Participants receive a CD of their performance, "so they can go home with a dream memory of the song they made, " Mr. Bing said.
Less than two months ago, officials here were much more upbeat about transit upgrades as U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood met with Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and Mr. Bing to announce a new task force on regional transportation.
"Jonathan wanted to make a film about Jamaica and Rastafari and it was very spiritual, " says Kevin Macdonald, who wound up being the third and final director after Chris Blackwell, the founder of Mr. Marley's record label, Island Records, suggested that Mr. Bing give him a call.
Mr Nadello said Microsoft had invested "significant dollars" in getting Bing on the search engine map.
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